Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Lessons

1. No matter how fast crochet is, and no matter how diligently you work on the project, monster skeins of sport weight yarn take a while.

I swear I have worked on this blanket faithfully every day, but I've been 'getting near the end of the second skein' for about a week. And still have a third skein of this yarn to go into the blanket. I have faith that I will eventually run out of the stuff. Though I'm starting to wonder if I'm not cutting things a little fine for a baby with a July due date.

2. Deciding to devote all your time to large projects brings the string of FOs to a grinding halt. Good thing I'm not trying for a particular number of FOs this year. But I have made it up to the fronts of the bulky weight sweater, now in two different colors of yarn. I'm still stinging a bit from frogging the whole first body, but I'm convinced it was the right thing to do. I like the way this is coming out.

3. We have the world's stupidest mice. The other day, Cookie and Biscuit alerted us to the presence of a mouse. Where 'alerted' means that they batted it into the living room and then corralled it neatly in the center of the room, taking turns swatting it back into the open whenever it made a break for the baseboards. (Really quite impressive teamwork.) My husband and I have no stomach to watch the torture of small rodents, even if they are vermin, so he captured it and threw it outdoors. The next day, another mouse strolled blithely into the living room. The cats (who were lolling on the sun porch at the time) never even saw that one. I bagged it and ejected it quite efficiently.

Now, mice are- with excellent reason- afraid of cats. They're afraid of the smell of cats. Why, then, would they venture into a space which is prowled by two such enthusiastic and energetic feline guardians? Clearly their miniscule little brains are not working well. Of course it could be that they aren't taking the feline protectors seriously. I can't imagine why.

The might hunter slacks off.

This is incredibly fierce and intimidating, don't you think?

I have advised the boys that Jonathan and I are not optimally designed for catching mice, and that I expect them to present the next mouse to me in a thoroughly defunct state. I'm not sure they were listening, however.

4. In other news, the Wasabi hat is nearly done- just need to look up a good stretchy cast-off (or go with my trusty sewn cast-off) and then block it.

5. On a more serious note, I've tried repeatedly to write something about Boston, but I don't have anything meaningful to say. I hope they get the whack job that did it.

5 comments:

I hear ya on the big projects.. I always have to have at least one small one on the needles, just so I feel like I'm accomplishing something.

The only "hunter" in our cat family is Peno. Tux is too lazy and Rocky is too stupid - Peno though - I think she'd be lethal... but we've never had any mice in the house to find out - you should see her watch those birds though!

Trying to remember the name of that disease (tri...tri... something) that is the reason pregnant women are not supposed to change the cat litter. The cats get it from mice, and what it does to the mice is turn off the fear receptor in their brain that reacts to cats. (As explained by my biologist daughter.) So if you see a mouse who's not afraid of cats, it's sick and you don't want it around.